European Opportunities Trust (JEO) has been managed by Alexander Darwall since launch in 2000, applying the same consistent approach to stock picking. Alexander believes that his focus on ‘all-weather’ businesses stands the trust in good stead in these uncertain times. In the recent interim results, Alexander identified several new challenges. However, he believes that when the era of ‘endless free money’ ends and interest rates start to rise, his portfolio of ‘special’, lowly levered global companies with strong pricing power will serve to re-establish JEO’s record of outperformance. Alexander’s focus on fundamentals, ignoring the noise in markets and taking a long-term view means this is a pure stock-picking Portfolio. He runs the portfolio in a concentrated manner. Despite being more concentrated, NAV volatility is not out of line with peers. We attribute this to portfolio construction, with Alexander identifying different investment drivers behind each holding. The six months to 30 November were poor in both absolute and relative terms. The Wirecard fraud was a significant detractor. However, other non-COVID-19 issues have hit other holdings and, more latterly, lack of exposure to many of the reflationary and cyclical stocks have hindered relative performance. JEO has only underperformed its benchmark in three of the nineteen financial years since launch. On a current Discount of 9.9%, JEO is the only trust in the AIC Europe sector with a negative Z-score, suggesting that its discount is wide relative to the position a year ago. In fact, the discount is wide relative to its long-term history too – having last traded on this level of discount for any stretch of time back in 2009/2010.